Congress to CIA: Review Gulf War illness info

After a former CIA employee told a team created to investigate Gulf War illness that 1.5 million documents exist detailing poisonous gas exposures during Operation Desert Storm, Congress is asking the CIA to review the secret classifications of those documents. “Ill Desert Storm veterans have been waiting for years for our government to make public any information in its possession about the kinds of toxic agents they may have been exposed to during and immediately after the 1991 war,” Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said in a prepared statement. “This is a long-overdue stop toward meeting that goal.” The intelligence authorization bill now includes language that would require the CIA to review the classification of those documents, with the intent of declassifying them. Studies have shown that veterans exposed to sarin — which the military accidentally doused troops with when the 82nd Airborne Division destroyed an Iraqi chemical weapons dump in Khamisiyah in 1991 — are more likely to suffer from symptoms of Gulf War illness. Research has shown the risk is heightened if service members also took anti-nerve-agent pills and were exposed to a lot of pesticides, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans Illnesses.